Pictures of the day: 5 December 2012

This NASA image shows the Plosky Tolbachik volcano, in Russia's far eastern Kamchatka peninsula, which erupted on November 27, 2012 for the first time in 35 years, sending clouds of ash almost 10,000 feet into the sky. Two nearby scientific camps were destroyed by lava flows, and schools in nearby villages were closed as a precaution. In this composite image from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra spacecraft, a scene from July 19, 2012 provides the background, with vegetation in red, older lava flows in dark grey and snow in white. A nighttime thermal infrared image, acquired on December 3, 2012, is overlaid on the visible image, and highlights the hot lava flows in bright yellow.Picture: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and US/Japan ASTER Science Team / AFP